Anyway

If you’ve ever browsed through, or read, one of those self-help books that prom­ises life will be per­fect if only you think good thoughts, or that suc­cess in a busi­ness comes from set­ting goals and striv­ing to meet them, you may have had the nig­gling thought that there might be some­thing miss­ing in the rosy pic­tures these books paint. If so, The Anti­dote: Hap­pi­ness for People Who Can­’t Stand Pos­it­ive Think­ing might be the right book for you. I haven’t reviewed many of the books I’ve read recently, but this struck me as import­ant enough to do so.

The book talks about how always try­ing to be happy, think­ing only pos­it­ive thoughts, and try­ing to pre­tend bad things nev­er hap­pen to people does­n’t work to make us happy; there is real value in con­front­ing our fears and wor­ries and work­ing through the worst-case scen­ari­os as well as the best-case dreams. The author points out that fear of fail­ure makes busi­nesses blind to the real­ity that set­ting goals and doing things in the same way as a suc­cess­ful com­pany does­n’t bring suc­cess in and of itself.

The chapter called ‘Goal Crazy’ got me adding book­marks: it’s about how goals often don’t work, and it’s not just because com­pan­ies and people set the wrong ones, but because set­ting goals at all often means neg­lect­ing oth­er import­ant aspects. Examples include people determ­ined to suc­ceed in busi­ness who end up divorced and with health prob­lems, or com­pan­ies who focus on sales and starve the research depart­ment of neces­sary funds. Inter­est­ing stuff indeed, and lots to think about.

The author dis­cusses vari­ous philo­sophies and meth­ods to accept life without the ‘think pos­it­ive at all times’ man­tra, includ­ing stoicism, med­it­a­tion, Eck­hart Tolle’s teach­ings, and the Mex­ic­an tra­di­tion of memento mori, and teases out the sim­il­ar­it­ies between these. In the final chapter, entitled ‘Neg­at­ive Cap­ab­il­ity’, he comes to the con­clu­sion that hap­pi­ness includes neg­at­ive thoughts and emo­tions as well as pos­it­ive ones. This is a groun­ded hap­pi­ness, rather than some­thing fleet­ing that depends on one’s mood. This, to me, sounds like some­thing worth­while (and achievable).